And yet, old Winter, I have liked thee less well than now; when the hungry fire devoured the last remaining faggot, and Nature's frozen face was but typical of the faces that my adverse fortune had petrified; but who cares for thee or them? So surely as prosperity brought back their sycophantic smiles, so surely shall thy stiff neck be bowed before the bounty-laden Spring. "Hope on--hope ever;" and yet how meaningless fall these words upon the ear of the poor widow, who but a stone's throw from my window, sits watching beside her dead husband, heeding neither the wailing cry of the babe at her breast, nor the wilder wail of the winter wind, as it drifts the snow against the door.
"Hope on--hope ever." She looks at you with a vacant stare, and then at the lifeless form before her, as if that were her mute answer. You tell her to trust in God, when it is her bitterest sorrow that the voice of her rebellious heart is, "Ye have taken away my idol, and what have I left?"
"Left?" poor mourner. O, so much, that you can not see until those falling tears have cleared your vision and eased your pain. "Left?" the sweet memory of unclouded earthly love, of which not even death can rob you; tones and looks which you will count over, when no human eye sees you, as the miser tells his hoarded gold.
"Left?" his child and yours, who, with the blessed baptism of holy tears, you will call God's. "Left?" O, many a household, whose inmates pressing their anguished brows under _living_ sorrows, would bless God for the sweet memories of earthly love that you cling to in your pain. "Left?" tearful mourner; a crown to win, sweeter for the wearing, when thorns have pressed the brow.
"Left?" a cross to bear, but O, so light to carry, when heaven is the goal!
"One by one thy griefs shall meet thee, Do not fear an armed band; One will fade as others greet thee, Shadows passing through the land.
"Do not look at life's long sorrow, See how small each moment's pain; God will help thee for to-morrow, Every day begin again."
I maintain it: all the heroism of the present day is to be found among women. I say it to your beards. I am sick of such remarks as these: "Poor fellow! he was unfortunate in business, and so he took to drinking;" or--"poor fellow! he had a bad wife, and lost all heart." What does a _woman_ do who is unfortunate in business, I would like to know? Why--she tries again, of course, and keeps on trying to the end of the chapter, notwithstanding the pitiful remuneration man bestows upon her labor, notwithstanding his oft-repeated attempts to cheat her out of it when she has earned it! What does a woman do, who has a bad, improvident husband? Works all the harder, to be sure, to make up his deficiencies to her household; works day and night; smiles when her heart and back are both breaking; speaks hopeful words when her very soul is dying within her; denies herself the needed morsel to increase her children's portion, and crushed neither by the iron gripe of poverty, nor allured by the Judas-smile of temptation, hopefully puts her trust in Him who feedeth the sparrows.